OccupyWallStreet

Abby Martin remarks on the second anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, highlighting a recent Reuters poll showing that only 15% of Americans are satisfied with the government’s effort to prosecute Wall Street…

After helicoptering in and praising Occupy Sandy this past Thursday (watch below), On Friday New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg threatened to have police shut down the only relief effort actually providing on-the-scene assistance to storm-affected New Yorkers. Via Occupy Wall Street:

The mayor’s office is calling upon local police forces to “clear all outdoor sites” effective immediately. Staten Island police representing the mayor’s office have threatened eviction action against the crucial Staten Island hub in the heavily hit Midland Beach area.

Aiman Youssef, a 42-year-old Syrian-American Staten Islander whose house was destroyed in the hurricane, has been running a 24/7 community pop up hub outside his property at 489 Midland Avenue. Community members are serving hot food and offering non-perishables, medical supplies, and clothing to the thousands of residents who are still without heat, power, or safe housing. This popular hub is well-run, well-staffed, and has a constant hum of discussion, support, and advice as well as volunteer dispatch through another pop-up group.

The Denmark-based multinational Danske Bank is one of the world’s largest, with assets worth about $600 billion. Its new marketing campaign, fascinating in much the same fashion as a train wreck, is based around the slogans “Occupy” and “A New Normal”:

The strategy is intended to restore trust in the Bank and ensure that we live up to our new vision of being “Recognised as the most trusted financial partner.” In order to reach that objective, we must set new standards for banking operations.

A year after it all began, the Occupy protests returned to the New York Stock Exchange this morning, with more than a hundred arrests notched by the early afternoon. Raw Story reported a few hours ago:

A New York University professor and an artist featured in The Nation magazine this month were among more than 90 people arrested early Monday morning as Occupy Wall Street marked its first anniversary with various demonstrations in New York City. “Just grabbed off sidewalk, along with everyone else,” artist Molly Crabapple said on Twitter shortly after being picked up by police.

Elsewhere, Jacobin magazine founding editor Bhaskar Sunkara reported that NYU Social and Cultural Analysis professor Andrew Ross, was arrested as part of a demonstration in the lobby of the JP Morgan Chase building on Park Avenue. “Cops are never friendly, but these cops aren’t cops,” Sunkara said. “They’re militarized beyond comprehension.”

The right-wing blogospere is having a field day with Chomsky saying, “I don’t usually admire Sarah Palin, but when she was making fun of this ‘hopey-changey’ stuff, she was—she was right. There was nothing there.” However, he follows that statement with, “And it was understood by the people who run the political system. So it’s no great secret that the U.S. electoral system is mainly public relations extravaganzas….” which, one assumes, would apply to Sarah Palin as well.

As can be expected, the cause has hit somewhat of a plateau, and the sentiment amongst the public seems to be that the Occupy groups should separate themselves from the violent factions of the movement and expand their community-minded support into the neighborhoods.

SFist took it upon ourselves to ask members of Occupy in various cities to suspend disbelief for a moment and pretend they were each the leader of the movement. What would be some tangible next steps for Occupy? Naturally, only two of the participants ventured to imagine if Occupy did have a leader, but we like the variety of answers we received…

Impose Magazine‘s Gretchen Robinette has a very thorough photo treatment of yesterday’s May Day activities in lower and mid-Manhattan. Parks and major thoroughfares such as Broadway north of Union Square were filled…

When money drives almost all activity on the planet, it’s essential that we understand it. Yet simple questions often get overlooked, questions like: Where does money come from? Who creates it? Who decides how it gets used? And what does this mean for the millions of ordinary people who suffer when the monetary, and financial system, breaks down? We have yet to see an election fought on these grounds and as political philosopher John Gray, commented, “We’re not moving to a world in which crises will never happen or will happen less and less. We are in a world in which they happen several times during a given human lifetime and I think that will continue to be the case”

People are waking up to this fact: the Occupy movement and the European indignados have erupted as a response to the current status quo. The media and ‘myth makers’, however, have found it much to easy to pigeonhole these movements into a “spiritual malaise” that provides no meaning or direction for our modern world. This is the response expected from a dominant neo-conservative economical world. This ever-adaptive financial system has been as such for centuries and those who can control it see no reason to steer a course elsewhere. Indeed the economics of emancipation can impart to us an interesting insight to the cyclical and prevailing nature of this economic paradigm…

Max Abelson reports in the San Francisco Chronicle: The world’s biggest banks are working with one another and police to gather intelligence as protesters try to rejuvenate the Occupy Wall Street movement…

The main objective of this piece is to hopefully make you and also Officer Lombardo laugh. To only make him aware of his actions and hopefully ease tensions next time he is at Occupy Wall Street. We mean no harm against Lombardo and don’t condone any hateful actions or remarks.

Police were guarding the entrance to the annual meeting of Wells Fargo shareholders on Tuesday as protesters associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement geared up to crash the gathering.

Dozens of officers were stationed around the Merchant’s Exchange Building in the city’s Financial District in advance of the 1 p.m. meeting. Bank stockholders were asked to show certificates or other proof of ownership before being corralled past gates erected in front of the doors.

Many of the early arrivals represented community groups from across the country that purchased Wells Fargo stock so they would have a say in the bank’s practices.

Shareholder Mark Richmond, a 59-year-old Portland member of the group We Are Oregon, said he hoped he could voice his concerns specifically about predatory lending and home foreclosures. He said he expected some raucousness inside and outside the meeting.